Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,101
with my mind set. I’ll knock back a couple of bourbons and let Hudson take me away fr—
“Hudson?” I ask, realizing I know one of the drunken twosome stumbling from the bar.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Hudson says, straightening up. The woman he’s draped around catches the hint and gathers herself.
“Clearly,” I say, looking from him to the woman. She is that woman. The woman you pick up in a bar one night who you couldn’t pick out of a lineup the next day. Thin, blond hair, questionable makeup, and a giant neon sign over her head that says you can take her home and never have to call her again.
“Can you excuse us?” Hudson says to the woman, motioning for her to go back in the bar. She stumbles inside.
“You don’t know her name, do you?” I ask.
“I think I knew it at one time,” Hudson says. That sinking feeling about Hudson rises to the surface. We’re all little plastic army men he’s moving around some battlefield on his bedroom floor. Objects. Not people. Hudson continues, “You really should have called.”
“No, I’m actually glad I didn’t,” I say, turning back around and heading to my car. I don’t need this bullshit.
“So that’s it?”
“Yep.”
“Is this about the other night? At Delfina’s?”
“You mean you don’t think stumbling out of a bar with another woman on the same night you’re supposed to meet me is enough of a reason for me to take off?” I ask, approaching him.
“Well, a departure yes, but this feels a bit final.”
“Does it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Good. Because it is,” I say, continuing to my car. Hudson follows.
“I’m only here for the summer, what did you think was going to happen?”
“Shipping off to war, are we?”
“What?”
“You’re heading back to Austin, Hudson. To teach. You’re acting like this is your last night ashore.”
“You being hilarious about this is really inconvenient.”
“Then I’ll just be on my way.”
“I think it’s about that guy—that coin-toss guy. I’m a professional, remember?”
“How about you save your condescending, dimestore psychoanalytic bullshit for a time when you don’t have Barbie Fucksalot waiting for you.” Hudson looks over his shoulder and back at the girl by the bar.
“It doesn’t take a fancy degree to know what’s going on with people, Queenie,” Hudson says, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. Of course I didn’t know he smoked.
“Oh, I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“You like to play with your food, don’t you?”
“What?”
“When you came at me at Delfina’s the other night, I knew something was off about you.”
“There’s nothing off about me.” He takes a drag off his cigarette.
“Sure there is. People are interchangeable to you. I mean, look at this. I wasn’t here, you got another one. No harm, no foul.” I motion to the other woman, still by the bar.
“That’s not—”
“You’ve got nothing, so you find people to feed off of. To empty. So you can feel something. And then you go home to your absent, lecherous father and your martyred, shallow mother and tell them tales about what a bad boy you were, hoping they’ll finally pay attention to you. See? No fancy degree needed, just like you said,” I say, my voice getting calmer and calmer.
“That theory only works if I can add a bit of an addendum.”
“What?”
“The trashier the girls the better.”
I slap Hudson’s face without thinking. He actually looks shocked. He claps his hand on his cheek and his eyes flare momentarily. And then he smiles.
“Watch your fucking mouth,” I say, pointing at him. My finger is one inch from his face.
“Oh, did that hit a bit too close to home?”
“You know it did,” I say.
“Hey, you guys okay?” The woman stumbles over to us from her perch by the bar. Hudson wraps his arm around her as she tumbles into him.
“You’re not as unique as you like to think,” I say to Hudson.
“Neither are you,” Hudson says, tugging the girl closer. She flicks her cigarette into the gutter.
“He waxes his eyebrows,” I say to the woman, pointing at Hudson.
“What?” She tilts her body back and takes a better look at Hudson. He turns away from her and they stumble back into the bar. Hudson doesn’t look back.
I climb inside my car and watch as they walk down the pristine Evans street, and past the adorable B and B I will never see the inside of. The Starburst shift and slide on my front seat as I get on the highway and drive toward North Star.